Strange Relation

It seems highly ironical that I should be writing this just hours after my last post. Didn't I just satirize and poke fun at my relatives and say how I couldn't stand them? Well, do you know what it's like when they go away forever? My paternal grandfather just passed away. He was 95. He was senile and almost fully blind. He suffered a lot these past few years. He was strong, he fought till the end.
Remember that pull I talked about? Well, its at work right now and I can't even see the keyboard properly because I'm crying. Its strange. I didn't even cry this much when my paternal grandmother died. We got the news at around 4 in the morning and when my mother woke me up to give me the news, I just stared impassively at her and went back to sleep. I was never close to her. I only cried a little bit when I saw her body. They said that during her last hours, all she could say was my name. Maybe she was remembering how partial and biased she was towards Kinkini. I remember when we were kids, we both made something and went upto her to show it and asked whose was better. First the diplomatic answer "Both" but when pressed, she pointed towards Kinkini.
When my maternal grandfather died, I was only 9 years old. It was the first time I had ever come to terms with a death. I didn't know how to go about it. I had never seen my mother act the way she did when she saw his body. For the next few days, all I did were burst into tears and hide myself under the blanket. And then, I asked my grandmother if they were going to have biryani at the funeral service. I would play with the ribbons which came with the sweet boxes and get into fights with other kids for it. The house was always full of people and they would come up to me and say something like, "Where's your grandpa gone?" like I was some little kid
Coming back to my paternal grandfather, I remember how he would teach me English grammar during the summer holidays, he would talk about his days as newspaper editor at Anand Bazar Patrika. He would talk about how they would receive hourly reports of World War II. He would talk about how good my father's English was and how he failed his Biology exams (giggle). Even though I knew about his condition, it pains me to think how I never prayed for him and I know I can't do anything about it now.
He gave me a quotation long ago and in some eerie way, it seems so apt :
Tomorrow, tomorrow & tomorrow,
Creeps into petty pace.
All our yesterdays,
Have lighted fools the way
To dusty death
Out, out brief candle
Life’s but a waking shadow,
Which struts & frets
And is heard no more
It is an empty tale, told by an idiot,
Full of sound & fury,
Signifying nothing.

Relativity Of Relations

We're all related to everybody else in some or the other way. There is an invisible cosmic thread that binds each and every one of us. You might not know that the person you just befriended was your neighbour a long time ago, before they moved away. Maybe the person sitting next to you, attended a summer camp with you, when you were just a toddler. Some relations are absloutely incredible, almost to the point of being unbelievable. Who would have thought my mother's friend, Mallika Aunty's sister in law's brother's son would be K.K. Anilesh???? Who knew that my fellow Bengali classmate in school, Promita, was my sixth cousin? Of course, we all like to be related to someone famous. My father likes to joke that I'm related to Akhil Chandra Sen, you know the person who wrote that infamous letter during the British Raj that led to the introduction of toilets on trains. Well, then I suppose we all need to be thankful to him, shouldn't we? In school, someone asked me if I was related to Raja Ram Mohan Roy. I wish I was but sorry, I'm not. Just because you share the same name or even a part of your name with someone doesn't always mean that you descend from their bloodline. But never in my wildest dreams would I have been able to guess that Sharmila Tagore was related to well.......Rabindranath Tagore. By the way, did you know that Brangelina are actually related? How incestuous is that?
If not in our present life, we even like to examine our relations in our past life. I remember seeing this sitcom where this lady was acting all high and mighty because she found out that in her past life, she was a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a person who knew Joan of Arc (giggle) I always thought I was a cat that camped near a baseball field in New York, in my last birth. Don't ask where I got that idea from.
But love them or hate them, there are some relations you can't escape from and they are........your relatives (Dum dum dum) If you notice, it's like as if relatives have this International Code Of Conduct which they are bound to follow, some of which include :
* Pinching your cheeks and embaressing public displays of affection
* Telling you, "Last time I saw you, you were just this big!" (yes, how many times have we all heard that?)
* Reminding you of embaressing childhood incidents like, "Remember when you were just a year old, you slapped me?" Well, that's a pity because now, I can't get away with something like that
and so on..........................
Of course, not all of them are bad. Maybe you get to find out that you have a couple of really good looking cousins (ahem ahem, is a certain someone reading this?) Albeit everything, relatives do have some role to play in your lives
* They serve as role models at times
* They pamper you silly
* They buy you whatever you want
* They always prevent your parents from yelling at you
But at times, things can get superficial like how your aunts and uncles pretend to love you more than your cousins, in front of them, but in reality they love them more. Well, that's perfectly acceptable because who could digest the fact that your mother thinks your bratty, ill-behaved relations are more adorable than you?
Bratty, ill behaved..................admit it, there are some in every family and you can't help detesting them, can you? The adults go all like "Dance for us" or "Sing a song for us" when you least want to do it and that too in front of complete strangers. What do I look like? A courtesan? The kids are even worse. The gospel truth is that I can't stand my cousins!!! OK, there's only a year's difference between me and Kinkini and we did play together when we were kids, so you could say I'm almost immunised against her behaviour but not that 8 year old! She comes into the house like she's royalty, gets up late, makes a fuss when woken up and makes life hell. In Kolkata, she switches the T.V. off when I'm watching it because she doesn't like what I'm seeing or she wants to play. I understand the need for that but I'm 17..I'm oldddd compared to her. She hasn't developed reading habits as yet and can't understand what I love so much about those fat books. Stiching is not a duet, it is best done, with lesser risk of injury, alone. She hates the fact that all my books and Barbies and other stuff are neatly arranged and to set things right, she has to spread them all over the bed and leave them like that after she's finished. And you of course know what she did to my poster. I'll never forgive her for that. She has to listen in on all my phone conversations and has the gall to tell me to hang up! The kind of food she eats seems unpalatable to me. She always has to sit in the front seat, even if it's a long drive and me, my mother and my aunt have to die of asphyxiation at the back. If refused, she becomes the avatar of wrath and that makes me want to slap all those nakhras out of her. She always too curious about things. Come on, an 8 year old in these times doesn't know what the Internet is? Puh-lease!!!!!!!!! You've got to be kidding me! You wouldn't believe half the things she told me about her school. I hope for her sake they're untrue. She scrunches up her nose at my music taste but she sways to the tunes of "Sexy lady on the floor.............Keep you coming back for more" If she happens to see this post, years later, when she's all wised up, I hope she realises with what forbearance I had to put up with her.
Yes, I know I should be awarded the Bad Big Sister Award and I don't care even if I was because both my elder cousins love me very much for I'm the sweetest, most adorable, most loving little sister in the whole world! People would kill to have me as their younger sibling. You think I'm boasting? Absolutely not! There is no place for untruth on my blog. Embellishments, yes but untruth, no.
I know everybody has their own story to tell and no matter what you feel for your relatives, there will always be that pull for them, deep inside you. You don't care if they're horrible to everybody else or social misfits or downright embaressment but to you they will always be your cousin, your aunt, you uncle or your grandparents and nothing.........even if you wished for it, could change that